NEW! By Barry Rubin

“There have been many hundreds of books for and against Israel but no volume presenting the essential information about its domestic politics, its society, as well as its cultural life and its economy. This gap has now been filled.”—Walter Laqueur, author of A History of Zionism

"[An] essential resource for readers interested in learning the truth about the Zionist project in the 20th and 21st centuries."—Sol Stern, Commentary

“Offering in-depth perspectives with encyclopedic breadth on the makeup of the Jewish state, focusing only briefly on Israel's struggle for self-preservation. The section "History" provides a masterful summary of Israel's past from its socialist beginnings before independence to the modern struggles with the Iranian regime. . . .”—Publishers Weekly

“A well-written portrait of a vibrant nation at the center of turmoil in the region.”—Jay Freeman, Booklist

"It is indeed just a starting point, but Israel: An Introduction, if disseminated among our universities to the extent it deserves, will at least allow students of the Middle East and of Jewish history to start off on the right foot. A glimpse into the real Israel may do more for the future of U.S.-Israeli relations than any amount of rhetoric ever could."—Daniel Perez, Jewish Voice New York

Written by a leading historian of the Middle East, Israel is organized around six major themes: land and people, history, society, politics, economics, and culture. The only available volume to offer such a complete account, this book is written for general readers and students who may have little background knowledge of this nation or its rich culture.

About Me

Barry Rubin was founder of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center--now the Rubin Center--and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. See the GLORIA/MERIA site at www.rubincenter.org.

Founded by the late Professor Barry Rubin, the Rubin
Center is one of the most versatile and active Mid-East research centers in the
world. The center is committed to making the most
up-to-date; accurate; and in many cases, otherwise inaccessible information available
to policymakers and to the broader public. The Rubin Center’s groundbreaking
frontline reporting and research—frequently picked up by the major media
outlets—sets us apart from other research centers.

Frontline reporting:Rubin Center researchers regularly visit the region, including
Iraq and war-torn Syria, witnessing developments first-hand. The center has exposed many important news stories. In addition to being first to reveal ISIS’s
use of chemical weapons, Rubin Center Director Dr. Jonathan Spyer visited
Baghdad this year and obtained unprecedented access to the Shi’a militias, interviewing
senior officials from those organizations there. Spyer and Rubin Fellow Aymenn
Jawad al-Tamimi published
the first piece anywhere to call out the role being played by the militias,
which later became mainstream knowledge. Spyer later
published a detailed report on the subject. Spyer has also reported from
Syria and Turkey, conducting groundbreaking research on the nature and
limitations of U.S.-Kurdish cooperation in Syria.

Primary research: The Rubin Center was ahead of the game on the importance of ISIS as a proto-state. In the first attempt to understand ISIS ideology through use of primary resources in Arabic, Rubin Fellow Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi has been translating and analyzing key ISIS documents--including recruitment, training, textbooks, administrative, and other primary sources. Jawad obtained an ISIS “masterplan” for the governance of the Islamic State, which was a front page story in the Guardian—which received the information directly from Jawad—and in other major media outlets around the world. Senior U.S. officials referred to the document as significant. In another major, but non-public, media monitoring project, Rubin Research Associate Alex Grinberg has been conducting pioneering research on Iran using Farsi-language resources.

Media and consultancy: The Rubin Center consults for government--including
the United States, UK, China, Israel, India, Canada, and the Czech Republic--news
media, and academic research. Rubin
researchers have been sought out by the White House, the British
parliament, and other Western governments, as well as media bodies, and
human rights NGOs. Rubin Research Fellow Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, for
example, has testified before the British House of Commons on the threat
represented by the Islamic State. The Rubin Center also
provides research work for important pro-Western organizations as
well as for major media outlets. Its work has been published/cited in the New
York Times, Huffington Post, FOX News, and more. Dr. Jonathan Spyer
is also a regular contributor to The Australian and to Jane’s Intelligence
Review.

Middle East
Review of International Affairs (MERIA): Covering the latest developments in the
region from a wide variety of viewpoints, including U.S. policy, radical
movements, and minorities, the Rubin Center’s quarterly journal MERIA has a
circulation of over 25,000. Get your free subscription today!

Turkish
Studies: In a crucial
geographical and political location, Turkey’s
importance is growing rapidly throughout Europe, the Middle East, and the
Caucasus. With an upsurge in interest in its
history, politics, and foreign policy, Turkish Studies quarterly--listed
in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI)--offers scholarly discussion
on these topics and more.

Books:
The Rubin Center has produced numerous books on subjects
of importance, including Nazis,
Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East—about the political alliance forged among Third Reich leaders, Arab
nationalists, and Muslim religious authorities during the 1930s and 1940s—and The
Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict—which
deals with the emergence of Islamist movements as Israel’s main
adversaries and Israel’s response to this. In 2015,
The
Military History of the Modern Middle East
was published, covering the military history of the past hundred years,
including such topics as both world wars, the Turkish-Greek conflicts,
Arab nationalism, the Arab-Israeli conflicts, and the post-2003 fighting
in Iraq. As part of the center’s Free Books project,
we also offer 13 of Barry Rubin’s books online, including on the
Israel-Palestinian conflict, Syria, U.S. policy, Jewish assimilation, and
more.

Every year, life in the Arab Middle East gets worse for its inhabitants. Tarek Heggy’s books The Arab Cocoon and The Arab Mind Bound (2011) argue that cultural factors are to blame. With all eyes focused on the Arab Spring, his books did not receive the attention they deserved on publication. They are worth revisiting today, because they help to explain why the Arab Spring failed. Heggy argues that a “Bedouin model” of Islam spread wildly in recent decades with … [Read more...]

In light of the July 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 powers, as well as Russian involvement in Syria, Russian-Iranian relations deserve special attention. This article argues that Russia and Iran have both common interests and cultural similarities that simultaneously foster their bilateral relationship and complicate these ties. This is also reflected in the foreign policies of both countries. Russia has been managing a “hybrid war” in Ukraine through … [Read more...]

This article examines the broad implications of the 2015 Yemeni civil war on Chinese foreign policy in the Middle East. The findings show that the ongoing crisis in Yemen presents a challenge to the key element of non-intervention guiding Chinese foreign policy in the region and may force Beijing to gradually abandon its low-key strategy in managing its relations with the countries in the region. INTRODUCTION The Yemeni civil war, which began in … [Read more...]

Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has faced numerous security challenges. Ongoing threats to the country’s security could potentially lead to a serious crisis or even escalate to a war. Israel’s greatest concerns are Iran’s nuclear program, Hizballah in Lebanon, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In addition, there has been unrest in the West Bank, incidents in the Golan Heights, fighting in Sinai, and uncertainty about Jordan. Since its establishment in 1948, … [Read more...]

The following article is the personal testimony of an Iraqi Jew regarding the last days of his community and their preparations for emigration to Israel. It is an extract from Emil Murad’s book, The Quagmire (London: Freund Publishing, 1998). Editor’s Note: This article differs quite significantly from the usual material published by MERIA. The story of the immigration of Middle Eastern and North African Jewish communities to Israel, and their expulsion from their host … [Read more...]

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When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about the role played in the Holocaust by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, he cannot have imagined the reaction he would detonate.

What he said was this: “He [Husseini] flew to Berlin. Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time; he wanted to expel the Jews. And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here.’ ‘So what should I do with them?’ he [Hitler] asked.

He [Husseini] said, ‘Burn them.’” In the subsequent global firestorm, Netanyahu was denounced for exonerating Hitler. It was said he had claimed the mufti had given Hitler the idea of exterminating the Jews when the two met in November 1941; that he was cynically trying to tarnish today’s Palestinians; even that he was a Holocaust denier.

His subsequent protest that he had no intention of absolving Hitler of responsibility fell on deaf ears. Even those who acknowledged that the mufti had allied with the Nazis insisted Netanyahu had turned history back to front.

Most of this reaction, however, is at best wide of the mark and at worst quite obscene. For Netanyahu was fundamentally correct.

There can be no doubt he spoke too loosely. He has provided no source for the words he quoted from both Husseini and Hitler at that November 1941 meeting. And he should have acknowledged that the mass murder of European Jews was already well under way, and that Hitler had talked about exterminating the Jews since the 1920s.

But mass murder is not the same as genocide. And the precise moment when Hitler decided to exterminate the whole of European Jewry – the “Final Solution” – has long been disputed by historians.

For even while the Nazis were rounding up Jews for slaughter they were also deporting them – more than 500,000 between 1933 and 1941. And recently unearthed documentary evidence suggests that the mufti and Hitler egged each other on in a mutual genocidal frenzy.

As late as July 1941, according to Hermann Göring, Hitler thought the last of the Jews could be removed from Germany by “emigration or evacuation.”

The authors write: “Yet since other countries refused to take many or any Jewish refugees, Palestine was the only possible refuge, as designated by the League of Nations in 1922. If that last safe haven was closed, mass murder would be Hitler’s only alternative.”

Rubin and Schwanitz make clear that the November 1941 meeting between Hitler and Husseini merely continued a dialogue that had started earlier that year about the mufti’s opposition to Hitler’s deportation of European Jews.

“In February 1941, Hitler had received al-Husaini’s proposal for an alliance of which one condition – paragraph seven – was that Germany stop Jewish emigration from Europe. After Hitler promised al-Husaini on March 11 to do so, Germany’s expulsion of the Jews was impossible and only mass murder remained.

“... After agreeing in early June to meet al-Husaini to discuss the issue, Hitler ordered SS leader Reinhard Heydrich on July 31, 1941 to prepare an ‘overall solution for the Jewish question in Europe.’ On October 31, he ended the legal emigration of Jews from German-ruled areas. But the specific final decision had not yet been taken.”

On November 28, Hitler met the mufti in Berlin. “Behind closed doors, Hitler promised al-Husaini that Arab aspirations would be fulfilled. Once ‘we win’ the battle against world Jewry, Hitler said, Germany would eliminate the Jews in the Middle East, too.” The following day, “he ordered Heydrich to organise a conference within ten days to prepare ‘the final solution of the Jewish question.’” As the book also shows, the mufti was making common cause with Hitler long before 1941. By 1936, he was courting the Nazis for arms and money. In 1940, he sent Hitler a nine-page letter detailing a proposed alliance. The Palestine question, he said, united them in their joint hatred of the British and the Jews. He proposed to make Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Transjordan a single federated state with a Nazi-style system. In return, he wanted Hitler’s help to wipe out all Jews in the Middle East.

Evidence that the mufti played a key role in the Holocaust was provided at the Nuremberg Tribunal by Eichmann’s close associate in the extermination program, Dieter Wisliceny. He said: “The mufti was one of the instigators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and was a partner and adviser to Eichmann and Hitler for carrying out this plan.”

This was corroborated at the tribunal by two witnesses, Andrej Steiner and Rudolf Kasztner, who confirmed that Wisliceny had talked about Husseini in these terms during the war.

Given all this evidence, the reaction to Netanyahu’s remarks demonstrates historical ignorance, venom toward Israel and particular malice toward Netanyahu himself – not least amongst Israeli Jews. Prof. Moshe Zimmermann of the Hebrew University, for example, said the prime minister “joins a long line of people that we would call Holocaust deniers.”

But as Dr. Alex Safian of CAMERA has pointed out, Zimmermann has previously likened IDF solders to the Nazi SS and Jewish children living in Hebron to the Hitler Youth. If anyone is guilty of Holocaust denial, it is surely Prof. Zimmermann.

Nevertheless, one has to wonder how Netanyahu could have been so careless with his words. The answer, I would suggest, is that he and the rest of Israel’s political class are crippled by the arrogance of moral certainty.

They know they are the victims of irreconcilable Arab aggression. They know they stand for morality, history and law.

And they think the evidence is so overwhelmingly obvious that no reasonable person could disagree.

They don’t grasp the extent to which reason has been eclipsed by emotion, ideology and bigotry. So they fail to realize that there is no lie about themselves too absurd or outrageous for the enemies of Israel to regurgitate.

These enemies react with fury to evidence of the grand mufti’s Nazi enthusiasm because this destroys the fiction that the Palestinian cause so dear to their hearts is noble. This cause is in fact the direct heir to a genocidal project.

We know that Nazi doctrine whipped millions of Germans into murderous frenzy. We also know Soviet propaganda turned truth and lies inside out and brainwashed millions.

Yasser Arafat learned from the Soviet Union how to rewrite history and capture the minds of the credulous. Mahmoud Abbas, whose doctoral thesis denied the Holocaust, hero-worships Husseini. Palestinian propaganda reproduces vile Nazi tropes of Jew-hatred.

Last century’s Islamist ideologues drew on both Communism and Nazism. The Palestinian cause likewise fuses Islamist and Nazi ambitions with Soviet psychological warfare. This explains not just the frenzied war against Israel, but why so many in the West are cheering it on.

By Brent Scher

The Washington Free Beacon

Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken flack for his comments this week that overstated the influence that Haj Amin al-Husseini had on Adolf Hitler, but a leading historian says that al-Husseini nevertheless played a key role in Hitler’s plans outside of Europe.

Dr. Wolfgang G. Schwanitz’s [and Barry Rubin's] book on Hitler’s relationship with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem is being credited as the source of Netanyahu’s belief that it was al-Husseini who convinced Hitler to exterminate the Jews rather than deport them from Europe.

Schwanitz, a scholar at the Middle East Forum, says that Netanyahu “exaggerated” his claim but insists that the broader argument that there has been a “long-standing incitement of people against Jews” emanating from the Middle East since the 1920s is “certainly correct”….

*Prof. Dr. Wolfgang G. Schwanitz is a Visiting Professor at the Rubin Center for Research in International Affairs and a leading historian of the Middle East. A native of East Germany, he was raised in Egypt. He holds a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern Studies from Leipzig University, German. He has taught at several German and American universities. He was head of Middle Eastern history at the Academy of Science in Berlin, where he also worked at the Max Planck Society’s Orient Center. He has been a visiting fellow at the French Center in Cairo, Princeton University, and the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. The has authored and edited numerous books, in addition to over 150 scholarly articles on modern Middle Eastern history and international relations. He was a researcher and lecturer of Arabic, world history, and Middle Eastern history at Burlington County College in Pemberton, New Jersey, and Rider University in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. He is also an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum of Philadelphia.

The pictures and information were obtained by Rubin Center Director Dr. Jonathan Spyer on a 2014 reporting trip into Kobani.

Using our network of contacts in the relevant professional echelon, the Rubin Center obtained a preliminary confirmation of the likely truth of claims of CW use, following whichwe published a world exclusiveon this crucial development.Ten months later, the result of exhaustive investigations by the relevant agencies of Western governments have confirmed our initial findings.The Rubin Center was first to bring this war crime of the most heinous nature to the world’s attention, months in advance of any other body. This early warning confirms the usefulness of the methods the Rubin Center has been pioneering in the field of Middle East research. These methods involve the combination of field reporting and the maintenance of an extensive network of sources throughout the Middle East, with access to relevant professional agencies and adherence to the highest standards of research methodology.

MERIA Journal - Volume 19, Number 1 (2015)

The following transcript discusses the implications for Israel in light of the instability in the Middle East since the Arab Spring and Iran’s nuclear and hegemonial ambitions. It is part of a symposium entitled, “Regime Collapse and Sectarian War: Where is the Middle East Headed?” The symposium was held on March 15, 2015, to mark […]

The following transcript addresses European domestic and foreign policy since the start of the Arab Spring and in light of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. It also discusses increasing antisemitism in Europe. It is part of a symposium entitled, “Regime Collapse and Sectarian War: Where is the Middle East Headed?” The symposium was held on March 15, […]

In the following transcript Dr. Martin Kramer recounts his friendship and long acquaintance with Prof. Barry Rubin and their shared interest in U.S. Middle East policy, noting Rubin’s deep concerns regarding the Obama administration in this regard. Also discussed is the administration’s view of the region, contending that it has an appeal to the traditional […]

The following transcript addresses the Iranian nuclear program and the P5+1 negotiations as well as Iran’s role in the ongoing Middle East turmoil. It is part of a symposium entitled, “Regime Collapse and Sectarian War: Where is the Middle East Headed?” The symposium was held on March 15, 2015, to mark the launch of the […]

This article estimates the probable conflict intensity in connection with Islamic State (IS, formerly known as ISIS and ISIL) terrorism. Based on Pew data, covering 2/5 of the global Muslim population, it is estimated that 17.38 percent of Muslims worldwide openly express terror sympathies (five terrorism support indicators used). Quantitative estimates on terror support rates […]

This report–in part based on a two-week trip to Lebanon in April 2015–examines the role of Hizballah in the ongoing Syrian civil war, particularly its relation with the wider Shi’i jihadi militia efforts in support of the Assad regime. The article also examines “martyrdom” commemorations for Hizballah fighters killed in Syria, with a collection of […]

The decline of America’s influence in the Arab World has coincided with the rise of Iran’s and the collapse of Middle East’s old order. The result is a power vacuum manifesting itself in a series of regional proxy wars such as those in Syria and Yemen. Not only is a battle between the Gulf States […]